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Leitchville

Leitchville is a rural township in the Torrumbarry irrigation area, on the Murray Valley Highway, 50 km north-west of Echuca. The nearest large town is Cohuna, about 15 km north-west.

The Cohuna-Leitchville area was opened up for farm selections in the 1870s. A school, named Box Creek, Gunbower, was opened near Leitchville in 1878. A Congregational Church Circuit began in 1879, with the Leitchville area named Echunga. The name Leitchville was applied to the school in 1892, probably after Duncan Leitch, a manager of the Gunbower pastoral station.

Private irrigation schemes, the Cohuna Irrigation Trust and the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission brought extensive farm irrigation to the district. The Commission converted the Kow Swamp, 3 km south of Leitchville, to a storage. In the midst of these developments Leitchville was described in the Australian handbook in 1903:

Leitchville became an important place in the district when a railway station was opened on the Elmore to Cohuna line (1915). A sawmill was opened in 1916 and a dairy factory within about seven years. A public hall and a stock saleyards followed at about the same time. A bowls club opened in 1939.

In 1945 the dairy factory was acquired by the Kraft Walker Cheese Company. During the next sixteen years the population of Leitchville and district grew by 25%, but since the 1960s there has been a slow contraction.

Leitchville has a recreation reserve with tennis, bowls and swimming facilities, two halls, a hotel and a small shopping area. The school had 53 pupils in 1998 and 22 in 2014.

Kraft sold the cheese factory to the Murray Goulburn Co-operative in 2001. At its peak the factory had 230 employees. In the 2000s there were 80 employees. Drought and a 42% fall in milk production over eight years led to closure of the factory in February 2010. Milk was diverted to a milk-powder factory at Rochester.